


i love the moment when you put your hand over my mouth to muffle my endless verboseness

by lavendre



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997)
Genre: 50 Sentences, Angst, Dysfunctional Relationships, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Multi, OT3 in spirit, Pining, Politics, Post-Canon, Slow Burn, Zack Fair Lives, gratuitous misuse of punctuation and grammar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:14:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25192225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavendre/pseuds/lavendre
Summary: Zack’s smile is slow and mischievous and there for no apparent reason at all -- “Us two again, huh,” he says, eyes squinting at the corners even though he must know the assignment will be a rough one.Fifty sentences for Zack/Tseng.
Relationships: Zack Fair/Aerith Gainsborough, Zack Fair/Tseng
Comments: 1
Kudos: 13





	i love the moment when you put your hand over my mouth to muffle my endless verboseness

**Author's Note:**

> From the old defunct 1sentenceorder on LJ. I went with the Beta table. Stories are not completely in chronological order, but do move in that general direction, and reference the FFVII Compilation (BC, CC, OG, ACC). I like some of these a lot, some not so much, though they were helpful to write for putting my thoughts down. This is part of an AU series where Zack survives that I will eventually back tag. The premise is that Zack joins the WRO, is terminated and eventually returns to his old Shinra roots. His relationship with Tseng is a mess. Aerith's death hangs over them both.
> 
> Title comes from a Chinese poem, "I Love All the Unfinished Things." It held the right mood and made me laugh.

**#01 - Walking** \- The sight of the back of his head was increasing in familiarity; it meant Zack was occupied with the work at hand.

 **#02 - Waltz** \- The view from the rafters was the most discreet, though Tseng imagined, had Zack cared to open his eyes when he tilted his head back to laugh with his arms full of the girl he knew better than himself, he’d have seen something he couldn’t ignore.

**#03 - Wishes** \- Tseng is used to being the bearer of bad news, but the letters in his desk say he’d like to be the opposite.

**#04 - Wonder** \- Zack’s hair catches blue in the light, tinted like a bird’s wings, though he’s never looked so trapped.

**#05 - Worry** \- The tile floor is cool against his cheek, wet and frigid with biting cold, reminiscent of other ventures, where the helicopter blew to pieces; Tseng doesn’t doubt that most of their partnership will wind up with him waking to the aftermath of a collision, Zack’s hands on his shoulders dragging him back to the living as he is instructed to do.

**#06 - Whimsy** \- Zack’s smile is slow and mischievous and there for no apparent reason at all -- “Us two again, huh,” he says, eyes squinting at the corners even though he must know the assignment will be a rough one.

**#07 - Waste/Wasteland** \- The bursts of the bombs rends him blind for a moment; Tseng squints down at the aftermath of Banora, Zack quiet and trembling furiously beside him reminding him of the potential for a greater danger in the next five minutes.

**#08 - Whiskey and rum** \- “Ugh,” Zack says, “Not bad,” after the third drink; Tseng likes how normal it feels to toss back drinks in no-name bar in a corner of the slum; he’s not home, he’s not in the office, so the suit jacket stays on even when Zack teases him for it but doesn’t leave his sword far off either.

**#09 - War** \- You live through one, you’ve seen them all; the real fight is the battle of attrition; how much can you take before you realize it’s not worth anything at all?

**#10 - Weddings** \- Aerith would have looked pretty in a gown and Zack would have enjoyed taking her out of it later, running away to live in the hills and populate like bunnies do; Tseng wouldn’t have minded, because they had both earned it over and over again, though the closest they’ll get is in the church of the slums while he treads quietly in the wings.

**#11 - Birthday** \- Every year that passes is a reminder that there’s more to make up for than the last; his existence isn’t insignificant but Tseng is hard pressed to believe that there will be ever be someone more charismatic than Zack.

**#12 - Blessing** \- The weather does not favor either of them on the muddy walk over and Zack’s content to watch the runoff from the plate above them while Tseng carefully skirts the edges of miniature lakes.

**#13 - Bias** \- “He’s nice,” Aerith breathes, “he asks about my day, he wants to know what I’m doing, he wants to make plans with me and follow through,” she says, and Tseng feels less concern about the amount of meddling he’ll have to do now that a third party has entered the picture.

**#14 - Burning** \- All the words he’d like to say, the apologies Tseng would like to make in regards to failing to give her the world despite his loyalty to the cause and Zack’s honesty with him -- he’s there like old boots beside the door and then he’s not, and Tseng’s grasping at nothing but smoke.

**#15 - Breathing** \- Zack breathed through his nose, but his hands were trembling as he buried the corpses of his fellow operatives in a snowy, desolate landscape.

**#16 - Breaking** \- Tseng is always grieving and there is no action that doesn’t overlap with the miseries of the past; but he can’t ever put the manila folders away, even though the time has arrived that there is nothing more that he can do.

**#17 - Belief** \- A Turks duty is to their work first but Rufus is rapidly shifting their plate tectonics; as meddlesome as it may be to have the president’s son breathing over his neck, conspiring and endangering them all, Tseng’s going to keep them all above water; he’ll throw the bigger stone.

**#18 - Balloon** \- The mourners dress in black, carry streamers and balloons and fake flowers, and the feeling of slipping into something other than blue is just another reminder of what Zack used to wear, too; Tseng can’t shift the palette that has colored him so.

**#19 - Balcony** \- Shinra Tower is a genius of architectural design, and Tseng was fond of spending his time on the upper levels with the fake plants, the large sofas and grand windows, marveling at the organized chaos and hidden ones far below.

**#20 - Bane** \- For all that Zack’s mouth never stops moving it holds Tseng captive in the moment, keeps him grounded while the world threatens to drop out from the bottom of his stomach.

**#21 - Quiet** \- Silence in his line of work is usually an admission of guilt; he doesn’t want to look at Zack, doesn’t want to tell him that the inevitable has happened, that he chose Shinra over her and the planet would have stolen her anyway; if he closes his eyes he’ll sink further into the dream and he’ll never have to have this conversation that will kill them both.

**#22 - Quirks** \- Though Tseng keeps the gun under the edge of his coat he’s always acutely aware of it’s weight and feel against his skin so it’s a cold comfort that, he hopes, rarely leaves the holster unless necessitated.

**#23 - Question** \- Zack’s mouth opened and closed several times but whatever he wanted to say was interrupted by the door slamming open and the arrival of the rest of the team; Tseng wonders if he will try again later.

**#24 - Quarrel** \- Tseng wants to shake him by the shoulders but he refrains; he remembers being young and sure of himself, sure of the value of a single human life, though now he wishes Zack would bolt, that his goodness wouldn’t cost him any more years that he won’t ever be able to get back.

**#25 - Quitting** \- The only way out of the Turks is death, or clever orchestration that hides them off the grid; Tseng knew that it was any different for SOLDIER, but letters of termination were a new killer to consider.

**#26 - Jump** \- Zack jumped through the glass window like the shards didn’t touch his skin, body straight and sharp like an arrow, and Tseng followed after more carefully into the factory below.

**#27 - Jester** \- “Zack, be serious, this is not a matter to be laughing at--” and Zack continues to smile, shoulders shaking quietly, and it’s surprising how infectious it is.

**#28 - Jousting** \- “Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever had a simulator route that included the Turks,” Zack muses, hand tracing a pattern along his knee while he’s watching him from the corner of his eye, and Tseng doesn’t want to consider what their combined might would do to a training room.

**#29 - Jewel** \- The silver earring was a small sparkle against the easy charm of his face; Zack twisted it idly while reading the briefing.

**#30 - Just** \- “It’s not right,” Zack says, “I would have always joined SOLDIER but I thought the people in charge would have better problem-solving abilities than simply bombing entire towns; it’s ugly, is what it is, even though I -- I want to believe this will fix everything I don’t think Lazard is thinking straight.”

**#31 - Smirk** \- The satisfaction of finishing the reports early reverberates through the entirety of his body; Tseng feels Zack move from the room, pleased with his handiwork, the pleasurable jaunt up the stairs making Tseng smile because the fax machine upstairs has been waiting for his arrival.

**#32 - Sorrow** \- Memories that will never leave: Veld teaching him to make the difficult decisions, exchanging goodbyes with Aerith in the lab, Meteor turning the world gold and red, listening to Elena’s screams in the dark, Zack knocking on his office door in Healen Lodge years later, ripping the old scab off all over again, looking at him like he’s relieved he’d been the one to answer --

**#33 - Stupidity** \- The Northern Cave is a place of washed out watercolors that remains unchanged no matter how close he skirts to the edges; he wonders where he may find everyone’s shared enemy, but as monsters do, it finds him first.

**#34 - Serenade** \- The closer Tseng gets to death the more he remembers what Aerith’s laugh was like, and his, and how it’s changed without hers to color it.

**#35 - Sarcasm** \- Tseng can tell by the low, cold bark in the back of the room that someone once again has made the mistake of reading Zack at a surface level.

**#36 - Sordid** \- Healen Lodge is laughable with it’s broken windows, rusted pipes, and peeling linoleum from old flooding -- but what is left of Tseng’s small family only knows how to live in broken things, so it’s not a surprise when Zack comes looking for what he remembers.

**#37 - Soliloquy** \- _Do you want me to beg for forgiveness_ , Tseng wants to ask, but doesn’t, just steps as close as he dares in the old lamplight so Zack can turn up his jaw to see to the steel and the apology both.

**#38 - Sojourn** \- Zack was a guest in a lot of places: friend’s couches, Gongaga, Edge, a church in the slums, the WRO’s barracks, Healen Lodge; for some reason he settles in the latter, maybe because its closest to the Shinra he knew, closest to the Shinra he hated, closest to the memory of what the company was -- Tseng just knows part of this is his fault (well, all of it -- he left him on his own, didn’t he?).

**#39 - Share** \- Zack’s breathing is slow and deep in sleep; he looks more tired, pale and waxy around the edges, though Tseng’s seen this pattern in everyone around him and maybe it’s just a slow-spreading poison that oozes out of him through osmosis wherever he goes.

**#40 - Solitary** \- “I want to be alone,” Zack snapped, then stiffened, briefly closing his eyes and the sight of him wounded does loosen the tension in Tseng’s body enough that it’s probably safe to ignore the demand and press forward, “--sorry, I’m the one who came here, I won’t tell you to leave.”

**#41 - Nowhere** \- “It was nice to see everyone again and it did make me feel a little lighter -- but you know, I don’t really belong in any of those places, and I think, maybe, I have plenty of failures I need to make up for as well -- don’t _smile_ Tseng, that’s awful --!”

**#42 - Neutral** \- “I don’t really have an opinion on the curtains,” Zack complained, though he took the samples from Tseng and held the color swatches up to the wall, squinting like it would make a difference as to whether he knew color theory or not; “Something bright to help the light bounce, maybe something yellow,” and Tseng scoffs because he already knew the answer.

**#43 - Nuance** \- Zack’s face didn’t change but his body turned, boots pointing at Tseng where he sat behind the desk and tried to explain the vast collection of envelopes written by someone dear to them both.

**#44 - Near** \- Zack waited for the evening to fall before coming through the door to remind him that staying awake any longer would cut into their combined pension funds, the amiable, stilted conversations they were working on, and what was the point in sticking around if Tseng wore himself out and died, what was he supposed to do, bond with Reno?

**#45 - Natural** \- He’s never been fooled by the charisma or the flirtations but Zack’s not an actor made of air; his presence is born from his wants to satisfy some sort of question, his smiles are easy and honest and meet his eyes, but Tseng’s never had easy answers to give.

**#46 - Horizon** \- Another orange sunset from before had made him too aware of the heat inside his body; now it’s a darker skyline, with darker vestiges, and he’s not in a hospital bed with Zack laid up beside him but outside watching the stars light up one by one.

**#47 - Valiant** \- It’s not courage, it’s grief, a thousand small cuts under his skin when he presses Zack into the back corner of the room to feel him under his hands and for not the last time makes a decision he may come to regret; he chooses.

**#48 - Virtuous** \- Tseng was quite fond of the plain couch in the corner of his office, even moreso Zack, who upon returning from a soggy day of rerouting flight routes collapsed upon it but not without notifying him first that there was takeout waiting for him on the counter downstairs and he was obligated to eat it before anything else.

**#49 - Victory** \- Zack tugged the manila folder out of his hands like one might exchange business cards, head bowed very slightly but he’s obviously less polite about it, stepping into the open space like he hoped Tseng might study and handle him the same way.

**#50 - Defeat** \- Tseng’s losses at the hands of enemies has re-gifted him the experience and knowledge of knowing where to place his bets: the underdog, who makes even him want to believe that there is some good he can offer this world.


End file.
